Spanish blog
__NOWYSIWYG__ Hello Wikians! I am Yatalu, a Belgian Wikia user and Helper of the Dutch community. Today I am here on Comunidad Central to introduce a voluntary user project to you that I started last year (we just had a first anniversary!). It doesn't involve extra user rights for those who join, but it is fun and collaborative, and at the same time useful for your and other communities. This project is called the Brigada de Idiomas de Wikia (Wikia Language Brigade en inglés), a name that consist of three parts. * Brigada stands for who we are: a team, because we have between one and two hundred members, called "Brigadiers", who work together. * Idiomas stands for what we do: translating and correcting wiki articles, or actually anything that your wiki may need, such as news flashes, text on images, a small part of the official website of a game/anime, and so on. * Wikia stands for where we do it: over all of Wikia, at my wikia, your wikia, or other wikis. To work neatly, we have created a wikia especially for the project. There, you’ll find links to our history, how to contribute, our rules, and many more details. What we do Translating and correcting Our work is based on two very specific things. The first are translations. We have translators who together are able to translate to and from more than 30 languages. So if you ever saw a foreign community with a good quality article which could be translated into Spanish for your community, you just have to make a request. To create a request, just go to this page, read the simple instructions at the top of the page and press the "New Request" button. After you have published, one of our Brigadiers will handle your request and will add the translated item(s) to your community. It works similarly to the adoption requests page on Comunidad Central. It may also happen that while navigating through a community, you come across an unnatural translation or a page filled with spelling/grammatical mistakes. The Language Brigade also has a page for that! For that, just follow this link. It works just like the translation request page: after reading the instructions, you make the request by pressing the "New Request" button. Another option is to find a brigadier who knows the languages you require help with and leave them a message on their wall. Remember that as this is a volunteer project, however, and brigadiers may decide to decline your request. What we do not What do we not do? The Wikia Language Brigade doesn't create and build up wikis from scratch; we help wiki's to get started or to grow further. We also only work on Wikia: we don't help you study English, we don't help you translate for Wikipedia or for your website. Some of our translators may not mind doing this kind of requests anyway, but if you create such a request, you should not assume that someone will agree to do it. We're also not a replacement of Spanish Wikia Staff: even though a couple of our Brigadiers are also Helpers or VSTF, we're not officially from Wikia. Some of us can help you with templates or will make a wordmark for you if you ask, but things such as wiki adoption, spotlight requests and wiki redesigning are tasks for Wikia Staff. Accomplishments Completed requests Since we have some Spanish-speaking translators, they have already gave a hand to help us to correct and translate some pages from different communities. Among them are: * Translation of an article for the SCP Wiki. Being this the result. * Translation of the user profile for Yuzura. Being this the result. * Translation of three long pages for Lucky Star Wiki. * Grammar and spelling correction of three articles for the SCP Wiki. * Big translation project into several languages. * The entire interface of the WLB Wiki: all users who have their Wikia language set to Spanish, can access the content of our community in their native language * This blog! You sure didn't expect that, did you? :) Yay or nay But what are my words if people don't like the result? To prove that I'm not just talking empty words, I will shortly leave the floor to a user who has made use of the WLB in the past: Our goal There are many good things that come out of a project like this, of course. As a first, we help improving the size and quality of foreign communities, and we give smaller foreign wikis an activity boost. This is especially important because small and young wikis need this extra input to build a base content and start their community. Knowing who are the bi/multilingual users within the community, might also help or strengthen the relationships between wiki families. That way, a Spanish and English wiki could discuss what they are working on and how to handle interlanguage links, and team up to create complex templates and layout elements. Become a Brigadier Do you know more than one language? Do you like translating and working with others? Do you like to proofread Spanish articles or are you very accurate in Spanish spelling and grammar? If you answered "yes" on any of these questions, then you should definitely become a Brigadier. Being a Brigadier Advantages But what's in it for you? What good will you get out of it? Well, to sum up: * By translating, Brigadiers will become more known among Wikia; you get the chance to be "part of the bigger community" * But if you want to stay on your own wiki? No problem – you could keep your wiki the main focus, and hop by whenever you time. Being in a team means that many hands make light work. * In short, we're a cool, diverse team with a lot of motivated users! How to join So how to join, then? It's simple and fast: you just have to add your username, your level in that language, and your overall availability on that language's Brigadiers page. This is here for Spanish and here for English; for other languages you know, you can check this category. Confused by the code? Read a more detailled guide here. After becoming a member, you just have to check on the translations or correction requests page, to see if there are any requests in which you can help. You can also post a message on the Spanish portal to ask what's going on. Spread the word We are a little great project, and all help to promote us we is much welcome. You can talk about the project in other communities that may require our help, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. For members of the project, we have some templates and userboxes you can put on your profile that are in various languages on this page. Opinions Alright, so far for introducing the Language Brigade! Feel free to leave your questions, comments, ideas and other stuff about this project below (: We are totally accepting any improvements on translations we’ve made so far, as well as additional translations for parts that are not translated yet. If you're passing by this blog much later than we've posted this, you do better voicing your opinion on our guestbook. Thanks for reading! — with help from Sr.Shenanigans for writing — with help from (insert names here) for translating